Wage Transparency, Rideshare Payouts, and More – New York News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from New York business schools this week.
Wage Transparency Works: Reduces Gender Pay Gap by 7 Percent – Columbia Business School
New joint-research from members of the Columbia Business School, INSEAD, the University of Copenhagen, University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, and Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business finds that wage transparency can help close the gender pay gap
Columbia’s Daniel Wolfenzon and his co-authors examined the effect of a 2006 requirement for Danish companies to report on gender pay gaps.
“What surprised us the most was the way in which this wage gap closed. Women’s wages did not increase at a faster rate in treatment firms as we were expecting. Instead, we find that men’s wages in treatment firms grew slower relative to men’s wages in control firms. As a result, the total wage bill grew slower in firms that were required to report wage segregated statistics,” Wolfenzon says.
“What is interesting is that the law has unintended consequences on women’s ability to climb up the corporate ladder and their willingness to join the labor market. When firms adopt fairer wage practices towards women, this can have positive effects on women’s labor market outcomes that go well beyond pay gaps,” UNC Kenan-Flagler Assistant Professor of Finance Elena Simintzi says.
You can learn more about the wage transparency research here.
Market-Driven Drivers: Dynamic Payout Ratio Means More Money, Less Wait – Binghamton School of Management
With the rise of on-demand services from ridesharing, we have become accustomed to getting what we want, when we want it. Binghamton University School of Management Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management Jiaru Bai knows the secret to discovering how to handle impatient customers: data.
“Having a dynamic payout ratio almost always performs better than a fixed payout ratio, according to our model and data analysis,” says Binghamton Assistant Professor Jiaru Bai / Photo via Jonathan Cohen
Bai and her fellow researchers analyzed rides from Didi, China’s largest on-demand ride-hailing service platform. They found that the optimal solution is to flexibly determine the payout percentage, rather than adhere to a rigid, fixed rate.
“Basically, when demand is high, providers should get paid a higher percentage, and when demand is low, providers should get paid a lower percentage. Having a dynamic payout ratio almost always performs better than a fixed payout ratio, according to our model and data analysis, and it leads to benefits for all involved,” Bai says.
You can read more about the ridesharing research here.
New Research Shows U.S. Consumers Prefer Brands that Support Refugees – NYU Stern Experience News & Events
According to a new report titled “How Helping Refugees Helps Brands” from the NYU Stern School of Business and the Tent Partnership for Refugees, American consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that support refugees. This includes brands that hire refugees, deliver services to refugees, invest in refugee entrepreneurs, and source from refugee businesses.
“This report shows that consumers will reward brands that support refugees,” says Gideon Maltz, Executive Director of the Tent Partnership for Refugees.
“In a crowded marketplace, brands that integrate refugees into their business can distinguish themselves from their competitors, especially among millennials. This is a clear demonstration that brands can do well by doing good.”
The Tent Partnership for Refugees, founded by Chobani’s Hamdi Ulukaya, is mobilizing the private sector to improve the lives and livelihoods of more than 25 million refugees. Ulukaya launched Tent with the hope that the private sector is uniquely positioned to address the global refugee crisis, mobilizing networks, resources, innovation, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the business community. There are over 100 companies in the Tent Partnership supporting refugees across 34 countries, which can be found here.
Professor Tülin Erdem, co-author of the report and chair of NYU Stern’s Marketing Department adds, “It impacts brand image and consumer brand purchase behavior positively.’
“This is consistent with current consumer (especially the millennial consumer) preferences for brands that take a strong stance for social issues and consider the welfare on multiple stakeholders, including the society at large.”
The full report can be accessed online. For more, check out the recent NYU Stern article here.
Columbia Business School Professor On Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions
Every year, half of all Americans make New Years resolutions. Unfortunately, according to the latest Marist Poll, one-third will fail. So, how do you make sure you succeed? Columbia Business School professor of business Gita Johar has advice for holding fast to your goals. Her trick: “Make it painful to break your resolution.”
How to Make Breaking a New Year’s Resolution Painful
The idea is to impose penalties on yourself for failing to keep your resolution. This can make it far more likely that you’ll follow through. By associating a negative outcome with failure, you’ll resist temptations to quit. “Self-punishment leads to heightened goal accessibility,” Johar believes.
And the idea of adding self-imposing penalties and restrictions is not new. Its origin goes back to ancient Greece and the Odyssey when Odysseus tied himself to his ship’s mast to resist the call of the Sirens. For modern times, the concept can be applied to using a smartphone app to reduce screen time or using an alcoholism drug to stop alcohol abuse.
“Enduring pain, in other words, is not just a nudge to do better in the future but also an inward sign of self-control,” Johar’s research explained. “You feel you have more self-control if you’re able to withstand pain.”
Proof Is in the Pudding
To prove her concept of using pain to succeed, Johar and her colleagues conducted a “painful” experiment that tested students’ willingness to drink bitter juice and listen to unpleasant noise.
In one experiment, 205 undergraduate students were tasked with thinking about a time they had too little self-control and overspent. They were then asked to read either an article about how negative sensory experiences were an indicator of self-control or how negative experiences had no indication of self-control. All students were then asked to drink bitter juice.
The students who read that self-control and negative experiences go together drank more bitter juice than others—they punished themselves for their failure with money. “Upon recalling a self-control failure that one feels responsible for, individuals who believe their personal qualities can change are more likely to endure negative experiences,” explained Johar.
The takeaway is that if you want to reach your 2019 New Years resolutions, you need to aim high and back up your goals with firm self-punishments when you fail. Read more about this idea on the Columbia Business School news site.
This article has been edited and republished from its original source, Clear Admit.
The Big Picture: The 5 Most Important MBA Numbers of 2018
Each year there’s a ton of new information that comes out about MBA programs. From new rankings to the latest GMAC news, there are a thousand little tidbits that can overwhelm applicants, students, and alumni. We’ve collected the most important MBA numbers of 2018.
To pare down the news into the information you need to know, we’ve taken a look at the big picture of the MBA for 2018 and outlined the five most important pieces of data you need to know. We’re talking about everything from the decline and U.S. MBA applications to the increase in female enrollment, the higher salaries and GMAT scores, as well as the increase in interest in technology. Continue reading…
Energy Conservation, Healthcare Struggles, and More – New York News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from New York business schools this week.
Do as Your Neighbor Does? Neighbors Caring about the Environment Makes You More Likely to Conserve – Columbia Business School
When it comes to interpersonal decisions, group elements often become a heavy factor, including with conservation.
Columbia Business School Professor Adam Galinsky recently co-authored a new study in Nature Human Behaviour that may offer insight into how to affect meaningful changes toward climate conservation.
By focusing on “second-order normative beliefs,” the researchers illuminate that when it comes to topics like energy conservation, for instance, “what people believe their community members care about is an important predictor of individual conservation behavior, above and beyond people’s own beliefs about energy conservation.”
Galinsky explains, “The evidence shows that policymakers can’t simply ask people to reduce, reuse, and recycle. In fact, trying to reach people with subsidies for environmentally-friendly decision-making can backfire. Instead, the roadmap to improving perceptions of conservation starts with reminding individuals that their neighbors care about it. It’s important to shift the focus from trying to change what people believe to reinforcing what their friends believe.”
You can learn more about the research here.
Faculty Snapshot: Finding a Remedy for Health Care’s Struggles – Rutgers Business School News
The Rutgers Business School recently profiled Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management and Program Director for the Masters of Science in Healthcare Services Management, Xin (David) Ding, whose research studies “potential ways to increase hospital revenues through process coordination, patient involvement, and the cultivation of a patient safety environment.”
Professor Xin (David) Ding / Photo via business.rutgers.edu
The recent profile in Rutgers Business School News reads:
“While physicians and nurses traditionally have been trained to take care of clinical needs from patients, they don’t necessarily know how to manage operations and businesses well. With the transition from volume-based care to value-based care, supply chain concepts can help care providers maximize value through the optimization of their resource allocations.”
You can read more from the profile here.
In the Future, Everyone Will Be Able to Make Robots – Stevens Institute of Technology SOB News
The Stevens Institute of Technology President’s Distinguished Lecture Series recently hosted prominent robotics and AI researcher Daniela Rus who “challenged the audience to rethink conventional notions of robots.”
“Imagine the limitless possibilities that could arise from the ability to create the machines that can help save lives, improve the quality of life, or transport us to places we cannot go to on our own,” she notes.
“Right now we have the ability to use our technologies, coupled with interesting interfaces, to enable much more extensive capabilities. And while, today, we can begin to use natural language to program machines, how far can we go in connecting us directly to the machine?”
You can learn more about Rus’ research here.
U.S. Tops Highest MBA Salary Rankings
Return on investment post-MBA is one of the main considerations for candidates. After all, who would want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an education without a solid salary afterward? That’s why it’s so important to look at how the best MBA programs can affect a graduate’s salary.
So, where should you go to school for your MBA if you want the best salary after graduating? We’re taking a look at the highest earning MBA programs per country to dig down into what you can earn as an MBA all over the world.
What Are the 5 Most Common MBA Interview Questions?
To get into an MBA program, you’ll first have to make it through the interview process. Depending on where you apply, you could be asked a range of different questions, many of which are specific to the school. Unfortunately, this can make it difficult to prepare for success, especially if you’re applying to more than one school at a time.
To help you prepare for your MBA interview, we’ve gathered together the five most common MBA interview questions, along with advice for answering each question. But first, we need to figure out what questions you’re most likely to run into.
Determining the Five Most Common Interview Questions
In a recent podcast on Clear Admit, Alex Brown, who wrote Becoming a Clear Admit: The Definitive Guide to MBA Admissions, tackled some of the most common MBA interview questions faced by current applicants. He unpacked interview questions such as, “Walk me through your résumé” as well as “Give us an example of a time you took a leadership role.”
To get a full idea of the most common interview questions, we took a look at the top ten schools as outlined by the U.S. News & World Report to figure out which questions were asked by the most schools. We looked at:
- UC Berkeley Haas
- University of Michigan Ross
- Northwestern Kellogg
- MIT Sloan
- Stanford Graduate
- The Wharton School
- Chicago Booth
- Harvard Business School
- Columbia University
- Dartmouth Tuck
At each of these schools, there were a few common denominators when it came to questions asked. Here’s what we found:
1. Why did you choose this school/program?
Almost every school, except MIT Sloan and Harvard Business School, wants to know why you’re interested in their specific program. After all, admissions teams know that you’re interviewing at more than one school and they want to know that you’ve done your research and chose schools that were a good choice for you personally. They don’t want to necessarily know that you know the history or prestige of their school or program, they want to know how their program aligns with your goals and interests and how it makes practical sense for you.
When answering this question, you want to try and be as specific as possible when it comes to “why” this program. Be sure to know which clubs, classes, centers, professors, case studies, alumni, or events fit into your MBA goals. This is your best opportunity to demonstrate your research and to show the admissions committee doesn’t question why you chose them, and that you’ve taken the time to imagine what it’s like to attend their school.
2. Why are you pursuing an MBA now?
You can go back to school for your MBA at any time, but why are you interested in going back now? That’s what every school wanted to know except for Wharton, HBS, and Columbia. The goal with this question is to figure out how an MBA fits in with your current goals for your career and objectives.
During this question, you want to talk about your future career plans and why your situation in life is leading you to make a move to the MBA now. You’ll want to discuss your motivation for choosing the MBA now and how the MBA will help your long-term interests be accomplished. Make sure your explanation plots out a path where the MBA is vital to reaching your goals.
3. Walk me through your résumé.
All but four schools on our list asked students to walk them through their resume. Often, this is the first question that you may be asked in your interview. The goal of this question is to allow you to give a summary of your experience to date. This gives the interviewer some groundwork that they can build upon for the rest of the interview. So, how you answer this question is vitally important.
This question might appear very simple at first glance, but it can have a lot of little landmines that you’ll want to avoid. A good approach to this question is to think of it as your resume executive summary but in verbal terms. The interviewer is looking for key descriptive terms that define who you are. This is your opportunity to weave in some strengths, passions, and interests.
We suggest coming up with a two- to three-minute verbal version of your resume that focuses on highlights in your career. Make sure you focus on “why” you made certain career choices to better explain your path and then highlight the outcomes of those choices.
4. Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership. What did you learn from it?
This can be a tricky question, but it’s definitely one that you could come across since all but four schools were reported as asking it. The goal here is to demonstrate that you’ve had some experience in a leadership role, even if it’s not traditional. During this question, you can speak about any influence you may have had over your peers—outside of traditional hierarchy—or leadership skills you may have gained during a project.
The key is to prepare three to four anecdotes that you can draw from to highlight such things as your leadership style and skills. In particular, make sure you can talk about key leadership skills such as vision, communication, teamwork, and so forth. And if you can, make sure you can quantify the outcomes of your experience.
5. Are there any questions you’d like to ask the interviewer?
At all but two of the schools—Harvard and Dartmouth Tuck—interviewees were asked to finish out the interview with their own questions. While this might appear to be a simple question at first, it is vital that you get it right. No admissions committee wants you to be a passive candidate, and this is your chance to demonstrate that you are thoughtful, prepared, and interested.
The key here is not to be generic and only ask questions like, “Why do you love X school?” Instead, you want to ask questions that are specific to your goals. For example, you might ask, “What other resources does the school offer for this industry?”
In the end, whether you’ve already been invited to a few interviews or you’re still waiting to hear back, it’s important to get prepared as quickly as possible. By practicing answers to some of these common questions, you can ensure that your interviews go off without a hitch.
